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File photo: Tommy Paul of the U.S. plays a backhand return to Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia during their third round match at the Australian Open tennis championships at Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)
Second-seeded Tommy Paul won his second career ATP title, surging ahead by winning the first three games in the third set and beating unseeded Marcos Giron 7-6 (3), 5-7, 6-3 in an all-American final at the Dallas Open on Sunday
Neither player had dropped a set on the hardcourt in Dallas before the final.
Paul held serve to open the deciding set, and again in the third game. He took the second game that included Giron’s third double fault in the first all-American tour-level final since Tokyo two years ago.
“That was a pretty unbelievable match,” said Paul, who in the new ATP rankings Monday will move up one spot to 14th, making him the second-highest ranked American behind Taylor Fritz.
It was the fourth ATP final for the 26-year-old Paul, who is from New Jersey. His previous title came in 2021 in Stockholm.
“This is our second title, but our first one in the states, so this one feels the best by far,” Paul said while recognizing his coach, Brad Stine.
The 30-year-old Giron, who had defeated two other top-20 opponents in Dallas, was trying to win his first ATP title. The Californian lost his only previous final in San Diego two years ago, the same year he reached the semifinals in Dallas before losing a three-setter that had tiebreakers in the final two sets.
Giron won the second set after breaking serve in the 11th game, then the 67th-ranked player served to win the set without giving up a point.
“Marcos, I was watching you all week this week. You’re playing unbelievable tennis,” Paul said. “I know your team and you very well. We played through the challengers … so it’s really cool to be playing in the finals of a a tournament now, and hopefully we can keep doing it and keep moving up for many more matches just like that. That was unbelievable.”
Neither player allowed a point in winning his first service game of the match. But Paul then took the third game from Giron, who hadn’t lost a service game in Dallas before then.
Giron had won eight consecutive sets in his four matches to reach the final, and hadn’t given up five games until the first set against Paul, which featured several extended rallies.
Paul then went from 40-love to deuce in the 11th game before Giron held for a 6-5 lead. But, Paul then held serve to force the tiebreaker.
Wu Yibing, who last year at Dallas became the first Chinese player to win an ATP Tour title, wasn’t in this year’s field.
The Dallas Open has been played on the SMU campus all three years since moving to Texas, but next year will be an expanded ATP event played in a bigger location.
When upgraded to ATP 500 level from ATP 250 next year, the Dallas Open will be played at Ford Center at The Star, the world headquarters and training facility of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. That facility, about 20 miles north in Frisco, Texas, will have a fan capacity of about 6,000, up from around 2,100 at SMU.